A former Food and Drug Administration official recently told NBC News that U.S. consumers should be careful when taking drugs made in China and India. 
According to the news outlet, Massoud Motamed, a former FDA inspector, said that he tried to sound alarms while he worked for the agency that there were systematic problems with drugs being made at two facilities in China and India.
The drugs produced in the factories allegedly makeup the active ingredients for generic valsartan and other blood pressure medications, which have been involved in nationwide recalls.
The news outlet reported that a growing number of U.S. pharmaceutical companies are using foreign manufactures to provide raw ingredients for their own products. The FDA reports that 85 percent of the facilities manufacturing the ingredients in American drugs are located overseas, according to NBC News.
Motamed said that inspectors are struggling to keep up with foreign production. Only one in five registered human drug manufacturing facilities abroad was inspected by the FDA last year.
“I believe it would surprise Americans how much we rely on the manufacturer and whatever they tell us to say that a drug is good or bad,” Motamed said, according to NBC News. Unlike domestic facilities, Motamed said that foreign plant inspection can be hindered by language barriers and time constraints.
“Say I’m at a domestic facility and I tell my supervisors that I’m finding all these problems and I need more time to inspect. That happens — no issue,” Motamed said, according to NBC Nerws. “The same is not true of a foreign facility. I’ve had inspections where I really could have benefited from the extra time and I knew there were problems to be uncovered, but I had to leave the country.”
Motamed ran into foreign facilities that had issues with equipment not being maintained and other problems during inspections.
For further information, you can click on the source link below. In one recall involving the generic drug valsartan, it was discovered there were contaminants formerly used in the production of rocket fuel.
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This is certainly alarming. Our government should be doing more to inspect drug manufacturing facilities and helping keep citizens safe. We will continue to monitor drug recalls and keep you up to date on any news.
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